Scientists spot Achilles heel of the Internet

Scientists spot Achilles heel of the Internet
Updated 2:29 PM ET July 26, 2000
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) - The complex structure of the Internet makes it resistant to errors or failure but is also its Achilles heel, scientists in the United States said Wednesday.

Because the system is so varied, if one or more nodes --- the crossroads through which Internet data travel -- go down, it has very little impact.

But researchers at Notre Dame University in Indiana, who have analyzed the connections within the Internet, have found that if the networks with the most highly connected nodes were attacked by cyber-terrorists it could fragment the Web into isolated parts.

"The Achilles heel (of the Internet) is that the structure has this double feature. Like Achilles it is very hard to kill it, but if you know something about the system then you could," Albert-Lazlo Barabasi, a structural physicist, said in a telephone interview.

An estimated 3 percent of nodes are down at an given time but no one notices because the system copes with it.

"The reason this is so is because there are a couple of very big nodes and all messages are going through them. But if someone maliciously takes down the biggest nodes you can harm the system in incredible ways. You can very easily destroy the function of the Internet," he added.

TOPOLOGY OF INTERNET SIMILAR TO US AIRLINE NETWORKS

Barabasi, whose research is published in the science journal Nature, compared the structure of the Internet to the airline network of the United States.

The majority of airports are small but they are all connected to much larger hubs -- cities such as Chicago, Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles.

"That's exactly the situation on the Internet: there are a couple of hubs that are crucial to the system," he explained.

Those big hubs or nodes control the traffic in the system.

If the Internet hubs are taken out simultaneously, there would be a serious problem, but Barabasi said the probability of random errors hitting the big nodes was very small.

In a commentary on the research, Yuhai Tu of the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York said the research was a first step toward understanding the robustness of the Internet.

"The good news is that we do not have to worry about random fluctuations of these networks. The bad news is that Internet terrorists could cause great damage by targeting the most connected router," he said.

Answers

This strongly strengthens the conclusory warnings about the high
vulnerability of Information Technology to intentional disruption,
that the U. S. Government summarizes at: .
This website and sublinks (esp. "Mission" and "F.A.Q.") gives
any "Y2K Bug" savvy person a STRONG case of "Deja Vu!" And it
removes regrets about having prepared, and about being wrong (at
least about the trigger event causing the feared disruptive effects.)

The Internet's reliance on a few key nodes makes it especially
vulnerable to organized attacks by hackers and terrorists, according
to a new study on the structure of the worldwide network.
Like the airline hub system that falls apart when weather shuts down
airports in Chicago or Dallas, the Internet could collapse if its
major nodes were targeted in a malicious attack, the researchers
said.

"If you take the big nodes out, you can harm the system very easily,"
said Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, a University of Notre Dame physicist and
co-author of the study reported Thursday in the journal Nature.

Transmitted data such as an e-mail or Web page hop across the network
from node to node until it reaches its destination. If a random
router is broken, a new path around the problem is forged.

Researchers found that the system can handle random failures because
the vast majority of nodes do not have many connections. But it's a
different story if several of the most highly connected nodes are
shut down, they said.

"If you go for the biggest nodes and take a couple of them out, you
can break the system into clusters that don't communicate with each
other," Barabasi said.

Such a massive cyber-assault has never occurred in the Internet's
history, though it is an increasingly tempting target with the rapid
growth of e-commerce and the increasing importance of the network for
businesses, governments and the public.

The most highly connected nodes are called Network Access Points,
where major Internet service providers exchange data. They are
scattered around the world and generally are in highly secured
facilities.

"What the study really does is put some rigor behind what the folks
running the systems already know," said Jim Jones, director of
technical operations for response services at Global Integrity Corp.
in Reston, Va.

"While the overall system appears robust ... and routers can fail
here and there without any noticeable impact, the reality is if
someone decided they wanted to turn off the Internet and had the
money, they probably could," he said.

Recent high-profile attacks have targeted individual Web sites such
as Yahoo!, CNN.com and Amazonattack that, at least in theory, could
be far more crippling.

Barabasi and colleagues studied maps and ran tests on snapshots of
the Internet to dissect exactly how its structure evolved over the
years as local users randomly added routers and links to the system.

"Everybody had been thinking that the Internet is fundamentally a
random network, that any two nodes are perfectly, randomly
connected," Barabasi said.

But it turns out that the Internet more closely resembles what is
known as a scale-free network, where most nodes have only one or two
links but a few are much more highly connected.

According to the analysis, the average performance of the Internet
would be reduced by a factor of two if only 1 percent of the most
connected nodes are disabled. If 4 percent are shut down, the network
would become fragmented and unusable.

The network maps obtained by the researchers did not name the most
highly connected nodes on the Internet. And they did not test
ttatives late Tuesday approved a bill by Congressman Elton Gallegly
(R-Ventura County) to "congratulate the people of the United Mexican
States on the success of their democratic elections held on July 2,
2000."

Gallegly is Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere.

"While Mexico has, in fact, practiced democratic governance for the
past several decades, the outcome of the July 2nd Presidential
election, ending 71 years of dominance in the Office of the President
by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, represents the most
dramatic and historic change in leadership in modern Mexican
history," Gallegly said during House debate on the bill.

"In addition, this election was deemed by both domestic and
international monitors as the freest, fairest and most transparent
election in Mexican history," Gallegly said.

The bill notes that President-elect Vicente Fox and current President
Ernesto Zedillo have pledged themselves to a peaceful and cooperative
transition of power. It also reaffirms the friendship between the
United States and Mexico, and reaffirms the U.S.' "unequivocal
commitment to encouraging democracy throughout Latin America." "This
vote for (the resolution) not only recognizes Mexico's successful
election, but also ushers in a new chapter of Mexican-U.S. relations,
which I hope will further bind our nations through our shared
aspirations for the future," Gallegly said.